This morning, while fixing Juliette's medicated breakfast, I smelled something. I had just gotten her fixed up and was in the middle of offering my normal morning affirmations of "who's a pretty kitty?" when I noticed it.
Over my right shoulder sat a coffee maker that looked normal, but for the fact the display had gone dark and it was rather alarmingly, smoldering. Well, something more than smoldering but less than belching smoke. I quickly came to the conclusion that something was wrong.
I had just made a pot of coffee and only had I drank half a cup, so my first order of business was to save the coffee! I reached in and pulled out the carafe and placed it on the stove safely away from the machine while I unplugged it from the wall.
Still smoking, I gave it a moment. The first extinguisher was less than an arm's reach away so I had that option. But if you've ever had to clean up that mess you'd know it's probably better just to let the house go and build a new one. I figured I wasn't in immediate danger, so I sort of just watched for a bit to see if it would abate.
Instead, the smoke was now accompanied by an alarming set of sounds. Snap, crackle and pop are noises that you expect from your cereal bowl, not your coffee maker. The smoke was not getting better, or worse, though there was a growing acrid component that my throat found unpleasant. It reminded me of December 26th of 2010 when my television, a Sony, suffered a similar death. I attributed that one to the Lions winning a fourth game in a row.
Being a man of action, I decided to make my move. I felt the machine to see if it was too hot to touch. Realizing it was not, I gallantly picked it up and held it out arms' full length from my body in case that bad boy went up. I guess to allow the shrapnel to gain more speed and kinetic energy so it could do its maximum damage to my body. That's not the way I thought about it at the time.
I took it to the center of the driveway and left it there. It eventually stopped smoking. I had saved the house, my wife and the cats. Perhaps most importantly, now that it was poured into my huge thermos, a present from Emily's parents that they thought was ridiculously large but I have used to great effect so often I can scarcely imagine life without it, I had saved the coffee.
The word "Hero" is overused these days, but I think it's appropriate to tell it like it is in this situation. without me, that coffee may not have made it. And I would now, deep into this Monday afternoon, be a corpse, slumped over my computer with a caved in skull for lack of caffeine.
"What a shame," said the medical examiner, zipping up the black body bag... "Caffeine headache. When will people learn to recognize the warning signs? This could have been prevented!"
As a postscript, I asked Emily to call Cuisinart and tell them about my trials, in case they wanted to send in the storm troopers and reverse engineer the only two-year-old unit to find out how such a thing could happen. Instead, the man on the phone didn't care so much. After he surrendered all of France to us (standard operating procedure I guess), he took our case number, made a sneering face, (I imagine), and hung up.
Tonight we are having dinner with our young friend, Abbie, with whom we went to Cedar Point this summer, so we'll stop and buy a new coffee maker using one of 70 dozen 20% off coupons from one of America's leading purveyors of small appliances and other goo-gaws for the home.
I don't remember my parents having to replace appliances so often when I was growing up. On our visit with them a couple weeks ago, I noticed they had a new clothes dryer. I also noticed it was not "high end" like my Dad usually buys. He told me it doesn't matter. spend a hundred, spend a thousand, everything these days is crap.
Well, he didn't say that, but that was the jist. This coffee pot that went sizzle-boom-pop was a direct replacement for the previous one. Except this one was much lighter, the case made of plastic instead of stainless steel. It had an overall cheaper feel. And that turned out to be true. This one cost $10.00 less than the first one, but lasted less than half as long. I'd gladly pay the sawbuck if it meant it wouldn't burn my house down.
Perhaps Messeur Cafe should be replaced with good old Mr. Coffee. Maybe a good old 'Merican coffee pot will fully explode and take us all with it instead of just throwing a pansy little hissy fit like this one did. Just like the French, eh?
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